Thursday, April 28, 2005

Novell hires top Samba programmer from HP. Software company adds another open-source luminary to its staff. Jeremy Allison says, "These guys know a lot about file sharing." [CNET News.com] Geek post - but an important one if you do networking. 10:06:04 AM    comment []

Arizona citizen border patrol wants to expand to Canadian border. A controversial civilian patrol group that has been monitoring the Mexican border for illegal immigrants is looking to expand ... [USATODAY.com Nation - Top Stories] The article says the Canadian border is twice as long as the border with Mexico...for a long time the Canadian/US border has been called the longest undefended border in the world. Now, a group of nutballs things that $8 billion is all that is need to secure it.  I have several questions. 1) Where are they getting the money from?  The US government does not have $8 billion to throw around now. 2) Guarding the Canadian border in January does not sound like a pleasure cruse to me.  Where are the volunteers coming from?  (Yes, I read the article - there are fewer people living along the US/Canadian border through the prairies than are currently living in Des Moine). 3) Just who are you guarding the border against?  US soldiers that want to cross into Canada?  Most Canadians don't need any documentation to cross now, and most are not willing to (except to go shopping). I would encourage the Minutemen to be very careful what side of the border they are standing on.  The RCMP takes a dim view of vigilanties with guns. 10:03:55 AM    comment []

Presidential dollar coins proposed. Before long, American pockets could be jingling with dollar coins engraved with the faces of Ronald Reagan, Millard Fillmore ... [USATODAY.com Nation - Top Stories] Until the United States removes the dollar bill from circulation, they can mint as many coins as they want and they will never be in wide spread use. 9:56:00 AM    comment []

The higher the SAT scores, the more the house is worth. 'As go the schools, so goes the real estate." Between the rise of the Internet and new laws that require more standardized testing ... [USATODAY.com Nation - Top Stories] I hope you find this as discouraging as I do.  It would seem that once again, artificial measures of worth are at play, determining where people live, work and go to school.  Test scores are not, and never will be representative of the skills and quality of the school in which your children attend. All a test score is, is a representation of how many of the answers the school instructors (I won't use teachers here because it is an insult to teachers) have managed to force into the minds of the students. Education is not now, nor has it ever been about passing a test.  It is about learning.  Learning how to think, evaluate, interrogate and integrate discrete pieces of data into a cogent whole that makes sense.  You will note that I did not say gets the right answer.  Except in math, there is never one right answer and several mathematicians will probably tell me that my theory there is flawed as well (which I am willing to accept). What we are doing now, is churning out a group of individuals that can barely form a sentence (although they can diagram one to the syllable) let alone evaluate the flood of data coming into their lives.  If we ask a dozen people at random what the Civil War was about, would we get the same answer?  Today, it is getting closer to yes, but several would argue (including those well versed in Civil War history) that the Civil War was a very complex thing that goes beyond simple cookie cutter answers. Further, most decision in life are not based on pabulum fed answers.  A key one is voting.  We saw in 2004 how the media spun every word out of the candidates mouths (on both sides of the aisle), and yet if you actually took the time to read what was said, it does not resemble what was printed.  How can any individual NOT take the time to read the original?  Because they do not have the time or the energy to think for themselves.  And it will only get worse.   9:53:25 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2005 David Lane.